WEEK 14, 2019 • 1

Adrenal Fatigue and Chronic StressIn our age of burnout, a controversial diagnosis might offer an avenue to recovery 4

1 Simple Method to Deal With

Tiredness, Loneliness, and Stress

Page 11

WEEKLY

AAr

on

AmAt

/SH

Utt

ErSt

oCK

Eggs and Health: Unscrambling the MessageThe deadly risk of eggs appears to be overstated—again 7

Week 14, 2019 Week 14, 20192 | MIND & BODY MIND & BODY | 3THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 14, 2019 B3

I Lived on the Brink of Death for Decades, and Then Everything ChangedSuicide seemed the only answer to this ailing mother until one fateful day a miracle began

FENGYING MAO

Before moving overseas and relocating to Toronto in 1997, I was a nurse in China, yet also a patient—I suffered endlessly from devastating illnesses. This is the story of my medical miracle: from living on the brink of death for nearly 20 years to getting a second chance at life.

If you’ve never suffered from a long-term chronic disease, it can be difficult to un-derstand the soul-crushing suffering that is involved.

For 18 years I suffered from hepatitis C—known by doctors as one of the most difficult illnesses to cure. My body felt like a cage and my life was reduced to hospital visits, taking medication, searching endlessly for cures and specialists and fantasizing of a way to alleviate my symptoms.

Sometimes I was hospitalized for up to six months, but despite being treated by China’s most renowned doctors, they could only manage the symptoms and couldn’t control the disease. Desperate, I added every alterna-tive method I could find—qigong, traditional Chinese medicine, herbal remedies, praying to Buddha, and on and on. Nothing worked.

Every day I could expect to feel constant pain in my liver and spleen as my liver turned to scar tissue from cirrhosis. This caused abdominal swelling that made it look like I was several months’ pregnant; even wearing a belt was excruciating. I also experienced crippling nausea, extreme fatigue, depression, bleeding gums, and endless other symptoms. Not only did the old diseases get worse, but new ones also developed: atrophic gastritis, pyelitis, ne-phritis, and low blood pressure. My body was extremely weak and my legs were swol-len and heavy. Walking up the stairs to my apartment felt like climbing a mountain. To add to the agony, my daughter, who was diagnosed with hepatitis from birth, was also diagnosed with liver cirrhosis by the age of six. Watching her suffer was unbearable.

I worked as a surgical nurse in China, and had easy access to medication and saw some of the best doctors in the country. We tried every conceivable treatment and exhaust-ed all options, yet my illness could not be brought under control. I had worked on and off as I could manage but by 1996 I was forced to quit my job permanently due to my failing health. Since I had some medical knowledge, I knew that my situation was critical. One day I drew up the courage to ask my doctor how long he thought I would live. He looked at me with pain in his eyes and said softly, “I think at least one more year.”

Despite being in my early 30s, I appeared thin and frail and could easily be mistaken for someone twice my age. Due to my ad-vanced illness, my father, already in his 80s, was forced to care for my daughter and I when my husband went to study in the United States. Overwhelmed by pain, lone-liness, and depression, I was so miserable that I couldn’t control my temper, lashing out at everyone around me. Even though my father and daughter were also in poor health, I often screamed at them and beat my child. I had truly lost control. Sometimes I stared at myself in the mirror, thinking, ‘who have I become?’

One afternoon, as I struggled to endure the pain in my body, I had the thought to jump out the window of my fourth-floor apartment. I could end it all right now, I thought. No more pain, no more hospitals, no more loneliness. Then I looked over at my father and daughter sitting on the couch. They looked so pitiful, how could I abandon them? Tears streamed down my face as I con-templated my life—how could I have ended up here? I cursed God for my misfortune, and for forcing me to live on the brink of death. My hopelessness felt like a pitch-black well that I constantly tried to crawl out of.

The surprising part was that through al-most two decades of pain, tears, and heart-break deep down I still had a sense of cher-ishing life. I desperately wanted to watch my daughter grow up with my beloved husband by my side. My heart ached for a resolution so that I could finish my life’s to-do list: go back to my fulfilling career, move overseas to be with my husband, and care for my father and child like nature intended.

A Second ChanceJuly 22, 1996, is a day I will never forget—a day that my fate changed. That morning, I happened to run into an elderly lady who used to live in my neighbor-hood. Her eyes filled with pity and compassion as

Fengying Mao with her husband, daughter, and son.

Fengying Mao with her daughter and son, after she started to practice a qigong practice called Falun Gong.

FENGYING MAO

UNSP

LASH

FENGYING MAO

ELEVATE AND INSPIRE

she looked at me—broken, frail and in pain. She told me about how she too had suffered from chronic illnesses but when she started a new qigong practice called Falun Gong, also know as Falun Dafa, her diseases—cholecys-titis and hepatitis B—disappeared.

I had tried other forms of qigong in the past, and they did nothing to help me. I didn’t believe in qigong but I was desper-ate, and curious about how this woman had overcome all her health problems, so I decided to give it a try. After all, I didn’t have anything to lose and the practice was taught for free.

At six o’clock the next morning I went to a local Falun Gong practice site with my 9-year-old daughter. We learned the exercises and borrowed the book “Zhuan Falun,” which describes the philosophy of the practice.

I found the book very interesting—it an-swered so many of the questions I had: the root causes of illness, the connection be-tween body and mind, and how to elevate the body physically by elevating your character.

Over the next few days, I continued go-ing to the practice site and reading Zhuan Falun and completely forgot about curing my illnesses. Yet, every day my symptoms improved. I was able to stop taking my medications yet I felt better and better. I felt light when I walked, it was easy to climb the stairs. My mood completely transformed. The relief and excitement I felt are hard to describe. It was like being placed in a brand new body.

One month later my daughter and I had a general physical exam. The results were beyond my wildest dreams: all the abnor-malities in my body had returned to normal. My daughter also got a clean bill of health. The illnesses that had held me hostage for 18 years were gone in a matter of weeks. My doctor was shocked and didn’t know what to say. Having no medical explanation, and afraid to acknowledge the medical miracle, he left the room and didn’t come back.

A New LifeAs it turned out, my physical changes were just the start of my change in fortune. Now that I was healthy, I could join my husband in the United States and raise our daughter in a free country. Seeing my dramatic change, my husband started practicing Falun Gong as well.

I felt like the most fortunate woman in the world, and then I received the most incred-ible news yet—I found out I was pregnant. Due to my previous illnesses, I hadn’t had a men-strual period for years and it was impossible for someone with my condition to conceive. Yet now, my body was so strong and healthy that I delivered a beautiful baby boy in 1997. When they got the news, all my relatives in China found it too incredible. Even now, they think I must have adopted my son.

If I hadn’t experienced all of this myself, I would have found it hard to believe. Yet there is no other way for me to explain the dramatic changes in my body after prac-ticing Falun Gong. I feel so grateful for the second chance at life.UNSPLASH

If you’ve never suffered from a long-term chronic disease, it can be difficult to understand the soul-crushing suffering.

It was like being placed in a brand new body.

TRUTH and TRADITION

ReadEpoch.comSUBSCRIBE TODAY

A NEWSPAPER ABRAHAM LINCOLN

WOULD READ

TRUTH and TRADITION

ReadEpoch.comSUBSCRIBE TODAY

TRUTH and TRADITION

ReadEpoch.comSUBSCRIBE TODAY

A NEWSPAPER GEORGE

WASHINGTON WOULD READ

TRUTH and TRADITION

ReadEpoch.comSUBSCRIBE TODAY

TRUTH and TRADITION

ReadEpoch.comSUBSCRIBE TODAY

A CURE FOR FAKE NEWS SYNDROME

TRUTH and TRADITION

ReadEpoch.comSUBSCRIBE TODAY

We live in a world saturated with messages promising us a future we can only dream to attain.

Jezael Melgoza/Unsplash

Joshua Becker

I am struck by the timelessness of simplicity and minimal-ism. It is not a new practice. Rejecting the empty promise of excess material possessions has been practiced (and promoted) by countless religious and thought leaders for centuries.

Many of these people communicated the danger and foolishness of excess physical possessions far better than I can.

Recently, I found this quote from John Berger. It was originally recorded in 1972 on the show, “Ways of Seeing.”

I wanted to share it here because he describes the impact that advertising has on us in such brilliant terms, his argu-ment equips us to better confront societal pressure and marketing. But secondly, because his warning was first issued 50 years ago, we are reminded that this temptation is not unique to us.

Note: He uses the word “publicity” in the original broad-cast. I have changed the word to “advertising” to help it read in a more modern vernacular.

John Berger, 1972:

In the cities in which we live, all of us see hun-dreds of advertising images every day of our lives. No other kind of image confronts us so frequently. In no other form of society in history has there been such a concentration of images, such a den-sity of visual messages.

One may remember or forget these messages

but briefly one takes them in, and for a moment they stimulate the imagination by way of either memory or expectation. The advertising image belongs to the moment. We see it as we turn a page, as we turn a corner, as a vehicle passes us. Or we see it on a television screen while waiting for the commercial break to end. Advertising images also belong to the moment in the sense that they must be continually renewed and made up-to-date. Yet they never speak of the present. Often they refer to the past and always they speak of the future.

We are now so accustomed to being addressed by these images that we scarcely notice their total impact. [...]

Within advertising, choices are offered between this cream and that cream, that car and this car, but advertising as a system only makes a single proposal.

Advertising proposes to each of us in a consumer society that we change ourselves or our lives by buying something more. This more, it proposes, will make us in some way richer, even though we will be poorer by having spent our money.

Advertising persuades us of this transformation by showing us people who have apparently been transformed and are, as a result, enviable. This state of being envied is what constitutes glamour, so advertising is the process of manufacturing glamour.

Advertising appeals to a way of life we aspire to, or think we aspire to but have not yet achieved.

An advertising picture suggests that if we buy what it is offering, our life will be different from what it is. Scene after scene shows you this differ-ent life. Not only will our home be different, but all our relationships will become radiant because of our new possessions.

But we can only achieve such radiance if we have money. And so, advertising also works on our anx-ieties about money, urging each of us to scramble competitively to get more, making money appear as if it were itself magical.

Advertising works on the imagination but it does something else too. Because advertising pretends

to interpret the world around us and to explain everything in its own terms, advertising adds up to a kind of philosophical system. The things which advertising sells are in themselves neutral, just ob-jects and so they have to be made glamorous by be-ing inserted into contexts which are exotic enough to be arresting but not close enough to us to offer a threat. Revolution can be wrapped around any-thing. In this way, advertising abuses the realities of public figures and events and struggles in other parts of the world. […]

Advertising is effective precisely because it feeds upon the real. Clothes, food, cars, cosmetics, baths, sunshine are real things to be enjoyed in them-selves. Advertising begins by working on a natural appetite for pleasure. But it cannot offer the real object of pleasure and there is no convincing sub-stitute for a pleasure in that pleasure’s own terms.

The more convincingly advertising conveys the pleasure of bathing in a warm, distant sea, the more the spectator-buyer will become aware that he is hundreds of miles away from that sea and the more remote the chance of bathing in it will seem to him. This is why advertising can never really afford to be about the product or opportunity it is proposing to the buyer who is not yet enjoying it. Advertising is never a celebration of a pleasure-in-itself. Advertising is always about the future buyer. It offers him an image of himself made glamorous by the product or opportunity it is trying to sell. The image then makes him envious of himself as he might be.

The words and pictures appear to be real and all belong to the same language. The text, the photo-graphs, the editing, the layout, the printing. All are elements of the same culture, our culture. On pages like these, reality itself becomes unrecogniz-able.

—John Berger, Ways of Seeing Episode 4

Joshua Becker is an author, public speaker, and the founder and editor of Becoming Minimalist where he inspires others to live more by owning less. Visit BecomingMinimalist.com

Advertising proposes to each of us in a consumer society that we change ourselves or our lives by buying something more.John Berger

Yanik ChaUvin/shUtterstoCk

Improve Digestion With Acupuncture and Chinese Medicine

Vital energy flows to the body through the digestive system, making it’s function critical to well-being

Jingduan Yang

T he American Gastroenterological Asso-ciation reported that digestive, liver, and pancreatic diseases result in more than 100 million outpatient visits and 13 million hos-pitalizations annually at a cost of $136 bil-

lion, which is more than for heart disease ($113 billion), trauma ($103 billion), or mental health ($99 billion).

Among digestive diseases, abdominal pain is the symptom most responsible for office visits (22 million) and emergency department visits (6 million), followed by nausea/vomiting (5 million and 2 million, respec-tively), and diarrhea/gastroenteritis (3 million and 1 million, respectively).

A new report finds that treatment costs, doctor visits, prescription costs, and hospitalizations related to diges-tive diseases have risen significantly in recent years. There are ways to prevent digestive diseases, as well as insight from ancient Chinese medicine on how to manage digestive health.

The Source of Body’s Vital EnergyDigestion is a critical biological process for the body to obtain nutrients and vital energy through drink and food. Therefore, the digestive system and its function are essential to sustain one’s life and bodily function. The body needs varieties of food and fluid to maintain the integrity of its bones, muscles, membranes of cells and organelles, as well as maintain its biochemical balance with water, vitamins, minerals, fatty acids, amino acids, hormones, enzymes, and neurotransmitters.

The nutrients that body absorbs goes through a com-plex biochemical process such as the Krebs cycle, that transforms the nutrients into energy that is vital to human life and function. The vital energy contributes to the regulation of body temperature, movement of body parts, and the function of organ systems. This energy powers the body’s senses, emotions, thoughts, and cognitive and executive functions.

Energetic Imbalance of Digestive SystemThe digestive system is an open system that takes in food from the mouth, digests and absorbs nutrients from the stomach and small intestines, and eliminates waste and toxins from the large intestines and rectum. Therefore, it is very vulnerable to our choice of food and drink, as well as how these fuels are delivered, i.e. the hygiene of the places they are prepared and how the foods are processed. It is also critical that the digestive system is kept clean and empty most of the time.

There are multiple patterns of imbalance of vital en-ergy with various causes, and professional evaluation by a physician of Chinese medicine is a good way to have these examined. Here we have two examples of common energetic imbalances of the digestive system that are common in the modern age.

Cold EnergyOne thing that has shocked me about traditional Western dining is that ice-cold water is offered on the dining table. The stomach serves as a stove that cooks and breaks down food for us. It requires “fire” energy provided by blood and energy supplies to the stomach that are increased at the time of digestion.

Ice-cold water works against this, causing the blood vessels and stomach muscles to constrict. From a Chi-nese medicine perspective, cold energy blocks vital energy flow as well as blood circulation. Chronically affected by the cold, one will suffer from stomach and intestinal pain, bloating, gas, diarrhea, and become sus-ceptible to infection and inflammation (gastroenteritis).

Removing ice-cold water from our dining table, from a Chinese medicine perspective, is a public health effort on par with stopping public smoking.

Besides food that is physically cold, there is also food that is energetically cold. Such food generates cold en-ergy regardless of temperature. For example, kiwifruit creates cold in the stomach, and should not be consumed excessively. The same is true of banana, pear, water-melon, tofu, clam meat, crab, and many raw vegetables.

Rebellious Stomach EnergyThe law of gravity supports food’s downward journey to the stomach and intestines. However, acid reflux, hiatal hernia, nausea, and vomiting—which is the sec-

ond most common symptom for office and emergency visits—move against the law of gravity. Chinese medicine describes these phenomena as rebellious Qi. Qi is a vital energy that moves digestive systems, but rebellious Qi describes the digestive system moving food up instead of down.

According to Chinese medicine, the causes of rebel-lious stomach energy include infections, cold food and drink, emotional stress, fatty food, and dysfunction of the liver and gallbladder. The energy of the liver and gallbladder regulates the entire movement of the diges-tive system. Dysfunction in these organs will cause all kinds of digestive disorders, including irritable bowel syndrome, gastroparesis, hiatal hernia, and esopha-gogastric reflux.

Unfortunately, liver energy is very sensitive to emo-tional stress, especially anger and resentment, which cause the liver energy to stagnate or move rebelliously. For those with history being abused in the past or pres-ent, digestive dysfunction is very hard to treat without taking care of the emotional trauma.

Acupuncture for Digestive HealthAuthentic acupuncture therapy is based on the holistic system of Chinese medicine. Acupuncture can very ef-fectively regulate imbalances of the body’s energy. It stimulates the points of the body that regulate internal organ function through the energetic networks called meridians. It can help open blocked energy channels, redirect the energy flow, and warm up the meridians and internal organs. It takes multiple sessions ranging from 12 to 36 treatments. Herbal remedies based on individu-alized diagnosis will complement acupuncture therapy.

Pilot studies have shown that acupuncture is effective in a wide range of gastrointestinal disorders, including nausea and vomiting, functional disorders (irritable bowel syndrome, constipation, and diarrhea), peptic ulcer disease, Crohn’s disease, postoperative ileus, and even gallstone disease. The most compelling and consis-tent evidence of the efficacy of acupuncture probably lies in its relieving effects on nausea and vomiting.

A recent review of studies showed that acupuncture is effective in the treatment of functional dyspepsia, describing a group of symptoms affecting the gastro-intestinal tract, including stomach pain or discomfort, nausea, bloating and belching.

Chinese Herbal Remedies for Digestive HealthDigestive health is one of the four pillars in managing people’s health because it provides the body with vital energy and connects with other important internal or-gans. For example, the large intestine affects the lungs, the small intestines affect the heart, and the stomach affects the spleen.

Every one of these organs has an energetic connection with the brain and contributes to specific brain func-tions. Chinese medicine has multiple herbal formulae made to treat common energetic imbalances of the di-gestive system.

For example, a traditional formula called Xiang Sha Yang Wei Wan (Stomach Formula with Aucklandia and Amomum) has 10 herbs combined to warm up the stom-ach energy, eliminate bloating, and relieve stomach pain. However, there is no one formula that fits all. Like acu-puncture, it is critical that one receives a comprehensive Chinese medicine evaluation.

Food therapy, eating habits, and stress management are all critical for digestive health.

Dr. Jingduan Yang is a neurologist, psychiatrist, and an expert in acupuncture, Chinese medicine, and integrative medicine. He founded Yang Institute of Integrative Medicine, Tao Clinic of Acupuncture, and American Institute for Clinical Acupuncture. Dr. Yang co-authored two books: “Facing East: Ancient Health and Beauty Secrets for the Modern Age” and “Clinical Acupuncture and Ancient Chinese Medicine.”

Food therapy, eating habits, and

stress management are all critical for digestive health.

Hospitalizations related to digestive diseases have risen significantly in recent years.

John Berger shared his incisive insights on the impact of advertising in 1972

Of Our Possible FutureAdvertising Creates Envy

Week 14, 2019 Week 14, 20194 | MIND & BODY MIND & BODY | 5

The Enigma of

Adrenal Fatigue and Chronic StressIn our age of burnout, a controversial diagnosis might offer an avenue to recovery

conan Milner

Do you have more stress than energy? Are you dragging all day, yet can’t fall asleep at night? Do you depend on stimulants to make it through life? Then you may be suffering from adrenal fatigue.

Adrenal fatigue is a new name for a very old diagnosis. It’s the idea that too much stress and not enough rest wears us down, accelerating the aging process, and draining us of the energy we once relied upon to get things done.

Adrenal fatigue covers a wide range of symptoms, such as weakness, fat accumu-lation, exhaustion, insomnia, inflammation, you name it. Virtually every system in the body can be impacted by this condition, but at the root are the adrenal glands—two small organs that sit atop each kidney.

Adrenal glands function like the body’s battery, pumping out stress hormones that get you revved up and focused to meet daily challenges. When you face imminent danger or some other high-stress situation, this bat-tery switches into high gear, resulting in a fight-or-flight response.

Over ActivatedOur resilient bodies are designed to react and recover from occasional bouts of stress, but when we go too hard for too long, we eventually break down. The theory behind adrenal fatigue is that our battery starts to lose power, triggering malfunction and fatigue.

Chinese medicine, Ayurveda, and other ancient healing traditions describe patterns very similar to adrenal fatigue, but this the-ory is extremely controversial in modern medicine. Conventional physicians say the condition doesn’t actually exist at all.

A 2016 systematic review published in the British Medical Journal finds no hard evi-dence for adrenal fatigue. The review cites a “poor quality assessment of fatigue,” and “the use of an unsubstantiated methodology” as proof that the condition is a myth.

The only official diagnoses regarding ad-renal health are rare examples of extreme underproduction and overproduction of hor-mones. However, for those who support the adrenal fatigue theory, the vast majority of adrenal malfunction goes largely unrecog-nized. A growing number of doctors believe that, in our high-stress modern world, ad-renal fatigue has become so common that it amounts to a hidden epidemic.

If there really are widespread cases of adre-nal fatigue, it wouldn’t be the first time con-ventional medicine dismissed a real problem. Back in the 1990s, fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome were both thought to be nothing more than psychosomatic symptoms of otherwise healthy patients. However, with enough patient complaints and doctors will-ing to consider the evidence, both ailments have gained much more credibility.

UnderestimatedSo how can some doctors see a problem that most don’t? According to Dr. Nisha Jackson, a specialist in gynecology and functional medi-cine in Medford, Oregon, the conventional medicine paradigm doesn’t acknowledge adrenal fatigue because it lacks the perspec-tive, tools, and treatment model necessary to address such a complex condition.

“Medicine today likes to treat people as ef-ficiently as possible because that’s what it’s forced to do, and it has to treat it with medica-tion,” Jackson said. “Adrenal fatigue is more about a lifestyle that you have to change, and I think that is just not something that is talked about in the medical office.”

Even if doctors don’t recognize adrenal fa-tigue, they certainly encounter its symptoms.

As much as 90 percent of doctor visits are related to stress. These visits typically trans-late into prescriptions for anxiety, insomnia, depression, or some other problem that can be identified and paired with a drug in under 10 minutes.

But Jackson believes taking a deeper, more holistic view of a patient, where such symp-toms can be linked to the same underlying cause, will result in a more meaningful so-lution.

“When you’re under-producing cortisol, and this is a very simplistic way of explain-ing it, but you don’t have it what it takes to get through your day,” Jackson said. “You don’t have what it takes to manage stress. You start having anxiety attacks, you’re not stable emotionally, and the worst thing is you’re exhausted. When you’re exhausted, you start eating things you don’t normally eat because you’re depressed.”

Rarely TestedOne huge reason doctors don’t see evidence for chronically underperforming adrenals is that they rarely, if ever, test for it. For doc-tors that do, it’s a different story. Jackson’s medical practices see thousands of patients a month, and most test positive for adrenal insufficiency.

Jackson’s perspective may be unconven-tional, but it comes from almost 30 years practicing medicine. When she was an OB-GYN nurse practitioner, she saw women who suffered the symptoms that she would later understand as adrenal fatigue. These patients didn’t see any relief from conventional treat-ment options, so Jackson began looking for answers elsewhere: acupuncture, mind-body therapies, herbs, and other nonstandard forms of medicine.

Jackson also gained valuable insights through her own experience with stress. A self-described workaholic trying to both start her own practice and raise a family, Jackson says her insatiable drive and not taking enough care of her own health eventually burned her out.

In her new book, “Brilliant Burn-out,” Jackson describes how she got her energy back and how she has helped many of her patients recover, too.

The book is primarily aimed at women, but Jackson says that over-stressed men can be just as susceptible to this condition, resulting in symp-toms such as hair loss, belly fat, and low sex drive.

“The men that we see in our medi-cal practices are very sick. They feel terrible. They feel depressed. They’ve lost a lot of their enthusiasm for life. Their testosterone levels are in the tank,” she said. “All of a sudden we’re seeing 30-year-old men with 80-year-old testosterone levels. That’s directly related to the adrenals. There’s no other explanation for it.”

Adrenal EffectsIt’s called adrenal fatigue, but the condition can cause hormonal havoc throughout the body. Thyroid and sex hormones are often impacted, as well neurochemistry, leading to even more symptoms, and leaving you even more stressed out.

The condition doesn’t hit everyone the same way. Some people seem to be able to run on overdrive for years without any visible con-sequences, while others may see a decline fol-lowing a few episodes of emotional upheaval that push them over the edge.

But no matter how much stress we can tolerate, Jackson believes everybody has a breaking point—a level of stress where the adrenal glands are forced to reduce hormone

production in an act of self-preservation.“At some point, their adrenal glands are

going to say, ‘We can’t do this anymore. We can’t keep up with you. So in order for us to go into preservation mode, we are now going to underproduce cortisol,”’ she said.

ReenergizedDoctors who specialize in treating adrenal insufficiency say it’s rarely an easy fix. And the more severe the case, the longer it can take to fix it. This isn’t the kind of condition where one pill makes everything better. Lots of is-sues often have to be addressed over a period of time in order to turn the situation around.

When people read about adrenal fatigue on-line, they’re often tempted to tackle the prob-lem by supplementing with the hormones they believe they lack. But this strategy runs a real risk of harm, and may even make for worse problems.

Jackson does prescribe bio-identical hor-mones made from yams with dosages based on regular blood serum tests. But she says the most important and profound recovery comes from patients learning how to manage the stress that got them sick in the first place, and by learning how to care for their body so it can better handle the stress they must face.

“Sometimes your hormone levels just re-balance themselves once you start changing your lifestyle habits,” she said.

Ideally, people who suffer from adrenal fa-tigue need to cut back on their hectic sched-ules, but that’s not always realistic when there are bills to pay and obligations to meet. How-ever, Jackson said if you can focus on the ba-sics of good health—sleep, diet, and reducing emotional distress—your body will be able to handle your must-do list much easier.

SleepAt the top of the adrenal recovery program

list is sleep. No matter how busy our lives become, we can’t replenish our energy without a good rest.

It’s important to make time for bed, but what if we still can’t sleep once we get there? Jackson says this likely due to a backward cortisol rhythm.

Ideally, adrenals produce the most cortisol during the day to give us en-ergy, stamina, and focus so we can deal with the stress that comes our way. Cortisol is supposed to drop at night so we can fall asleep and sleep deeply. But Jackson says that, for many, this rhythm is flipped.

“You will be exhausted during the day, but wired and tired at night,” she said. “It’s a huge problem.”

This flipped rhythm comes as a result of years of routinely pushing yourself when your body is begging for

rest. Yet instead of slowing down, many of us reach for stimulants to get us through the day, eking out a little more energy that our adrenals don’t naturally want to give.

When we finally give our exhausted ad-renals a break at the end of the day, they get a chance to recover, so they switch on again right before bed—at exactly the wrong time for sleep.

One supplement Jackson uses to help with a flipped cortisol rhythm is phosphorylated serine. When taken before bed, this safe amino acid helps lower cortisol levels so your brain can power down and allow you to sleep.

One thing to avoid is drinking alcohol before bed. It may help knock you out, but alcohol actually creates more sleep problems by interfering with restorative rest.

DietFood is the second major factor when it comes to our energy level. And if we’re dragging through our days, we often look to sugar for

energy. However, a high sugar diet actually costs us energy in the long term.

Jackson says the key to adrenal recovery is to keep glucose levels steady. Eat regularly, mostly vegetables, protein, and good healthy fats like nuts and seeds. Weed out the sugar and simple carbs.

“Protein is the nutrient that helps stabilize your blood sugar longer, and that’s probably the most important thing in adrenal fatigue,” Jackson said. “Big peaks and troughs in your glucose levels is a disaster because it calls for more cortisol to be made to help you deal with the blood sugar imbalance.”

Another important nutrient to make sure you’re getting enough of is vitamin C— a sub-stance vital for making cortisol.

Mental DowntimeOur body needs mental rest just as much as physical rest. Jackson recommends adopting a meditation practice, but if this seems daunt-ing, just find a quiet space (even if you have to go into the restroom), and concentrate on your breath and releasing your anxiety and worry. Instead of always scrolling through your phone when you take a break, develop a habit of giving your overfilled brain a mo-ment of clarity.

ExerciseRather than depending on stimulants for en-ergy, try exercise. It may sound counterintui-tive, but not working out can cause fatigue. Exercise is one of the best ways to help your body better adapt to stress. It increases oxygen flow to your brain and muscles to help sustain your energy throughout the day.

Adaptogen HerbsIn ancient times, doctors treated symptoms like weakness, premature aging, and fatigue with herbs. These same herbs today are used to treat adrenal fatigue. They are known as adaptogens because they help the body bet-ter adapt to stress. They help elevate or lower your hormones according to your own indi-vidual needs. Some of the best adaptogens for adrenal fatigue include Korean ginseng and ashwagandha.

BoundariesAnother important aspect of recovery is learning to say “no.” Avoid people who drain your energy. And don’t agree to things you don’t have the energy to do.

“I’m constantly weeding people out who drag on my energy,” Jackson said. “While that sounds kind of harsh, it’s a very important thing to do, because there is only so much energy that you can emit in one day.”

Of course, better management of relation-ships has the potential to resolve some of these problems without attrition.

Avoid RelapseThe recovery plan for adrenal fatigue really just boils down to the same factors that have always been at the heart of a healthy life: ad-equate rest, a good diet, and a calm mind.

However, once you feel better, it’s tempt-ing to return to your old ways. When we get our energy back, the to-do list starts to grow again, and we forget about maintaining the basics of good health and self-care. Soon, we end up right back where we started.

Jackson says relapse is very common, so she encourages her patients to take note when they feel their best, and remember what it took to get there.

“I’ve learned that I have to do the basic things every day or I’m not going to be able to do what I really want to do in life,” she said. “I love being plugged in. I love helping people. And I know that if I’m not doing those basic things I’m going to hit the wall at some point.”

Biggest Mistake Dieters Make? Not Enough WaterExperts say drinking water can relieve hunger pangs and help you lose weight along with a healthy diet

kiMBerlY holland

Diets come in all shapes and sizes. Some are com-plicated. Some are very simple.

A diet dependent on your blood type might seem overly complex compared to a diet that just requires you to cut out almost all carbs.

On the other hand, an ultra-low-carb diet might seem incredibly convoluted compared to the grape-fruit diet. That diet calls on you to eat grapefruit

almost exclusively for a few days or weeks.However, all of these diets, regardless of their

intricacies, are doomed to fail if you aren’t drink-ing enough water.

That’s according to Dr. Thomas Chi, a urologist at the University of California–San Francisco.

Chi told Business Insider that the biggest mis-take any dieter can make is focusing so much on their new eating plan that they neglect their water intake.

“People who are on extreme diets, they tend to have higher levels of salt and less hydration,” Chi said.

These high salt levels may be particularly prob-lematic for meat-rich diets. A lack of water, com-bined with an increased intake of meat, can lead to complications like kidney stones, Chi says.

Your body, however, has a natural way to tell you that you need hydration: thirst.

“Thirst is our natural bodily alert that we are running low on fluid,” Dr. Niket Sonpal, a New York City internist and gastroenterologist, told Health-line. “You should respond as soon as you can.”

Chi’s point—that dehydration puts people at risk of sabotaging their healthy eating plans—is valid, according to research. People who don’t drink enough water can quickly become dehydrated.

Thirst is easily interpreted as hunger. That pang can lead you to eat a snack when really all you need is a sip of water.

“Successful weight loss consists of a plan of action that accesses where you are, accesses where you want to be, and how you are going to get there,” Sonpal says.

Should water be a part of that plan of action, with just as much emphasis as the foods you eat?

“Yes, it is an important part, not just of weight loss, but also of general good health,” Sonpal says.

How Water HelpsWater alone will not be your weight-loss savior, just as any other element of a healthy lifestyle is not solely responsible for weight loss. This includes exercise or healthy foods.

A diet is dependent on a handful of key factors working together.

“On its own, drinking large amounts of water will not be enough to bring about substantial weight loss,” Sonpal says. “But it does help when included into a regimen of nutrition that accounts for a healthy distribution of macronutrients and a diverse consumption of food groups.”

That means water, along with that healthy new diet, just might help you achieve your goals. Ig-noring the importance of water could sabotage your diet.

“Water intake is thought to aid weight loss by increasing fat metabolism and decreasing feed-ing,” Dr. Chirag Shah, a board-certified emergency medicine physician and an assistant professor in emergency medicine at Rutgers University, told Healthline.

A 2016 study of more than 18,000 middle-aged and older adults found that individuals who drank more water were consistently more satisfied (i.e. not hungry). As a result, they ate fewer calories on a daily basis.

That same study found that people who were steady water drinkers consumed less cholesterol, fat, and salt as part of their daily diet compared to people who were dehydrated or didn’t drink enough water.

“Weight loss isn’t going to occur just because you drink water,” Devin Alexander, celebrity chef and author of “You Can Have It!” told Healthline. “If you drink enough water and your meals are [composed] of fried chicken, mac and cheese, and ribs, you’re never going to lose weight.”

“That being said, drinking enough water is a key

component to success,” Alexander added. “It’s very easy to mistake thirst for hunger. I know when I’m not drinking enough, I definitely want to eat more. Also, water legitimately fills you up. So if you drink a lot of water between meals, you’ll likely feel fuller faster.”

A 2010 study found that people who drink water immediately before a meal actually have greater weight-loss success than people who do not drink water. That, the authors suggested, may be because the water has a filling effect and helps people eat less.

Water is also a “freebie” for dieters. In other words, it adds no additional calories, sugar, carbs, or fat to the daily totals, unlike many other drinks including sport or energy drinks.

“[Water] helps substitute other drinks that could be adding unnecessary amounts of sugar and so-dium into your diet,” Sonpal says.

How to Put More Water in Your DietYou don’t have to wait for thirst to tell you it’s time to drink.

Staying hydrated can have many health ben-efits, from your skin to your brain. It’s smart to sip—and often.

Pack Water“I carry water everywhere I go,” Alexander says. “I think it’s in everyone’s best interest to find a water bottle you love and attach it to your hip. You’d be surprised how much more likely you are to avoid eating when your body isn’t in need of calories.”

Opt for Water Alternatives“To anyone who ‘hates’ water, try opting for a fruity decaf iced tea for some of your ‘water’ drinking,” Alexander says. ”But it’s better to drink an herbal iced tea that you love even if you have to spike it with a bit of zero-calorie natural sweetener over not getting enough liquid at all.”

Set an AlarmIf you can’t remember to drink water, your phone can—or at least it can remind you. “One strategy that I’ve told patients to help them remember to drink a glass of water at various times during the day is to set an alarm on one’s mobile device to go off in one to two hours,” Shah says. “When the alarm rings, it is time to drink a glass of water.” Repeat the process every day until drinking water becomes a habit.

Hydrate With Food“Remember there are other fluids that keep you hydrated,” Sonpal says. “There is also water in food, namely vegetables and fruit.”

Sip, and WaitIf you feel a pang that suggests you’re hungry, try a glass of water first. Then wait 15 minutes. If you’re still hungry, you’re probably actually hungry. If the water satisfied you, your body was just telling you it needed a sip. Drink some more. Your body will appreciate it.

The Bottom LineDrinking enough water is as important to achiev-ing your weight-loss goals as a healthy eating strat-egy. Water takes a few minutes to actually hydrate your body when you drink, but water quenches your thirst almost immediately.

Sip before you snack to keep your calorie counts down and you’ll be one step closer to your weight-loss goals.

Kimberly Holland is a freelance journalist and editor. This article was originally published on Healthline.

Prescriptions for Healthy Food Might Save Lives—and Money

Researchers say model predicts billions of dollars in savings and millions of heart attacks and strokes prevented

Prescriptions for healthy food written for Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries might lower the risk of costly chronic illnesses, such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease, and at the same time lower the costs of care, a new study suggests.

The prescriptions would even come with a 30 percent discount on foods, including fruits and vegetables.

Using computer models, researchers calculated that healthy food prescriptions could prevent as many as 3.28 million cardiovascular events, such as heart attacks and strokes, and save as much as $100.2 billion in health care costs, according to the study published in PLoS Medicine.

People included in the simulations were between 35 and 80 years old and were enrolled in Medicare and/or Medicaid.

As part of the modeling, the researchers used data from the three most recent National Health and Nutri-tion Examination Surveys (NHANES 2009-2014), as well as from published sources and meta-analyses which

included demographic information, dietary intakes, policy effects, diet-disease effects, policy costs, and health care costs.

Several assumptions were made in the modeling, in-cluding an estimate of the impact of a 30 percent dis-count on patient shopping habits.

When the researchers ran their model with a prescrip-tion for fruits and vegetables, they estimated that 1.93 million cardiovascular events would be prevented and $39.7 billion would be saved. When they ran it with the broader prescription for healthy foods, they estimated that 3.28 million cardiovascular events and 120,000 diabetes cases would be avoided and $100.2 billion would be saved.

“Our findings support the implementation and evalu-ation of healthy food prescriptions ... to improve the diet and health of Americans,” said researcher Yujin Lee, a postdoctoral fellow at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University in Boston.

“We found that partial coverage of the cost of purchas-ing fruits, vegetables, whole grains, nuts/seeds, seafood and plant oils in Medicare and Medicaid would be highly cost-effective—about the same cost-effectiveness as drug treatments for high cholesterol or high blood pressure,” Lee said.

Dr. Mylynda Massart welcomed the new findings.“It’s exciting that we are finally having a conversation

about this because it needs to happen,” said Massart, di-rector of the Primary Care Precision Medicine Clinic at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. “It would be so great to see money invested in an intervention that could make a difference in the quality of life and in reducing disease burden and potentially cost less.”

While the study findings are based on a model rather than an actual trial, “it may convince people to put money into research studies on actual people in real communities,” Massart said. “This is part of the whole concept of precision medicine. People are born with a genetic predisposition for diseases that interacts with environmental exposure. Often the risk factors are modifiable.”

Massart said she would enthusiastically embrace the concept if it could be proven in trials. “I’d much rather prescribe a cucumber over a pharmaceutical any day,” she added.

From Reuters

Feeling hungry? Drink up. staying hydrated can help your body shed pounds and keep you from eating as much.

rather than depending on stimulants for

energy, try exercise.

it may help knock you out, but

alcohol actually creates more sleep

problems.

all photos bY shUtterstoCk

Dragan grkiC/shUtterstoCk

ann

a sh

kUra

tova

/sh

Utte

rsto

Ck

Thirst is easily interpreted as hunger.

Thyroid and sex

hormones are often

impacted, as well neuro-chemistry.

Week 14, 2019 Week 14, 20196 | MIND & BODY MIND & BODY | 7

U.s. arMY photo bY patriCk albright

shUt

ters

toCk

ConnECt to LEad

A ‘Battle Buddy’ Can Keep You Going and Help You SucceedGet out of your own head and find support by joining forces with someone going your way

scott Mann

I met Cliff Patterson in 1991 when I was go-ing through the United States Army Ranger School. As ranger buddies, we shared some crazy times, some hard times, and some rough times. We were two very different guys. He was from Washington, D.C., grew up in the city. I was a country boy. I don’t think he was crazy about having my scrawny redneck self as his ranger buddy, but it all worked out.

We couldn’t have been more different, yet we became brothers. A lot of it had to do with the adversity we went through together. We were always checking in with each other. No food. No sleep. Lots of stress. We leaned on each other to get through the course. When one of us was feeling bad, the other would be feeling okay. When one of us was out of food, the other one would have a little bit of food left in their MRE ration pack to spare. That’s just how it went over and over, day in, day out, taking care of each other. We eventually got each other through that course and went on to be great friends.

We lost Cliff in the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001. Cliff taught me a lot through the years, but the importance of battle buddies and ‘get-ting out of your own way’ are what still sticks with me now.

Yeah, he was my ranger buddy, but in other units, they call that one person who looks out for you and you look out for them, your battle buddy. It’s the same thing really. Hav-ing a battle buddy serves a range of purposes both in peacetime and in combat. You always

your life. Think about the power of check-ing in with the people in your cubicle, with the people on your team, the people in your association, or your nonprofit. How often are you checking in with your wife or your kid? Just look them in the eye and ask them how they’re doing. Those people closest to us in life, those are our battle buddies. Besides, if we don’t look out for each other, who will?

One of my favorite authors, Ste-ven Pressfield talks about the con-cept of battle buddies in ancient Sparta in his book Warrior Ethos:

“The greatest coun-terpoise to fear, the ancients believed, is love, the love of the individ-ual warrior for his brothers and sisters. At Thermopylae on the final morning when the last sur-viving Spar-tans knew they were all going to die, they turned to one of their lead-ers, the warrior, Dienekes, and asked

him what thoughts they should hold in their minds in this final hour to keep their courage strong. Dienekes instructed his comrades to fight not in the name of such lofty concepts as patriotism, honor, duty, or glory. ‘Don’t even fight,’ he said, ‘to protect your family or your home. Fight for this alone, the man who stands at your shoulder. He is everything, and everything is contained within him.’”

That’s true in your life as well. Look to the woman to your left, the man to your right. Fight for them. Check in with

them. Check in with your battle buddy,

and you’ll find that you’ll get out of your own way, out of your head, and lead the way you were meant to lead.

Scott Mann is a former Green Beret who specialized in unconventional, high-impact mis-sions and relation-ship building. He

is the founder of Rooftop Leadership

and appears frequently on TV and many syndicated ra-

dio programs. For more information, visit

RooftopLeadership.com

How often are you

checking in with

your wife or your

kid?

trainees negotiate a confidence course on sand hill at Fort benning, ga., on Feb. 27, 2019.  benning is the first stage of ranger school, where soldiers undertake an intense training program.

check in on your battle buddy. That way, no one gets left behind.

There are so many lessons from the military that we can share with those of you in the civilian community who are leading every day, doing big work, and the battle buddy concept is one of them. As I travel around the country working with civilian leaders, what I see consistently is that so many are isolated and stuck in their own heads.

They feel, in many ways, like they’re strug-gling uphill. Maybe they feel they’re not good enough to accomplish what it is that’s been put in front of them. They’re wondering if they can accomplish what they want to achieve. In many cases, leaders today in the civilian world feel cut-off from everything around them.

Those same things happen in the military. Battle buddies help us make that something that we can endure, and even thrive upon.

It works just as well in the civilian world.This doesn’t mean you have to go into your

job on Monday and assign a battle buddy, but apply this concept of checking in with each other. Apply this concept of getting out of your own head and checking in with the person to your left and right and seeing how they’re doing. Just ask them, “How are you doing? How are you feeling? Is everything okay?”

That’s the exact same thing Cliff would do with me all the time with that big smile of his, and it would totally change my world. When I would do that for him or other folks around me, it would pull me out of my own head as well.

Think about this battle buddy concept in

all iMages bY shUtterstoCk

Unscrambling the Message

E g g s a n d H E a l t H

The deadly risk of eggs appears to be overstated—again

toM sanders

It’s hard to keep up with the message on eggs. Are they good for you or not?

In the 1960s, people were told: “Go to work on an egg.” But in the 1970s the public was advised to avoid eggs because

they were linked to high blood cholesterol. The negative press on eggs continued in the 1980s when raw eggs were linked to salmo-nella poisoning.

The message changed in 1999 when a study published in JAMA, a leading medi-cal journal, found no link between egg con-sumption and the risk of cardiovascular dis-ease—except possibly in people with Type 2 diabetes. This lack of a relationship between egg consumption and cardiovascular disease was reaffirmed in 2013 in an analysis of 17 reports of studies involving over 3 million participants.

Eggs were rehabilitated as part of a healthy diet, so much so that it became fashionable to keep chickens.

Eggs were in the news again in 2018 when a report from China on half a million people noted a lower incidence of cardiovascular disease (mainly haemorrhagic stroke) in people who regularly ate eggs, for reasons that remain uncertain but could be due their to contribution to protein intake, as suggested

by previous studies in Japan, which has one of the highest intakes of eggs in the world. But now the doom merchants are back, warning that eggs can kill.

This latest report followed nearly 30,000 participants for an average of 17 years. Of these, 5,400 had a cardiovascular disease event, i.e. a heart attack or stroke. The re-searchers found that each egg consumed was associated with a 2.2 percent greater absolute risk of cardiovascular disease over the follow-up period (roughly 22 extra cases of cardiovas-cular disease per 1,000 participants).

The statistical methods used were robust, and the pooled data from six studies represent the ethnic diversity of the U.S. population and the diets of ordinary Americans.

The study’s limitations are the dependence on a single measure of dietary intake at the start of the study and the strong correlation of egg intake with obesity and unhealthy life-styles, such as smoking, eating lots of red and processed meat, and not eating a lot of fruits and vegetables.

Statistical adjustments were made to cor-rect these confounding factors things that mask true associations. However, these cor-rections are imperfect and invalid when the correlations with egg intake is very strong. For example, in the United States, eggs are often eaten with bacon, sausages, or burgers,

so it’s impossible to disentangle the effects on cardiovascular disease risk of eggs from these fatty meat products.

Also, the increased risk was much greater than would be predicted from the known ef-fects of eggs on blood cholesterol levels. These findings need to be considered in the con-text of the North American dietary pattern because they may not apply to other dietary patterns, especially Asian.

Observational studies such as these can only show associations (they cannot prove causa-tion), so they should be treated with caution.

The Role of CholesterolThe average egg consumption in most coun-tries is usually only three or four eggs a week. A medium-sized egg provides 226mg choles-terol and average cholesterol intakes typically range between 200-250mg per day.

It’s easy to be confused by a high blood cho-lesterol level, which increases the risk of car-diovascular disease, and its relationship with dietary cholesterol, which is mainly provided by eggs. Very high blood cholesterol levels are usually inherited or caused by a lack of some hormones (such as thyroid hormone). But moderate increases in blood cholesterol are related to diet.

Continued on Page 9

Here we go again. A new study warns that eggs could be bad for us, but it’s results are tainted by

bacon and bad choices.

Week 14, 2019 Week 14, 20198 | MIND & BODY MIND & BODY | 9THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 2019B2

Wi-Fi in Schools: Experimenting With the Next GenerationCommercial wireless systems expose children to

nation’s highest radiation levels

Continued from B1

Wireless radiation has become commonplace de-spite well-documented evidence of its harm, with thousands of studies going back several decades demonstrating health problems associated with exposure. Some of the strongest evidence came last year from the final report of a $30 million, 19-year study funded by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. It was conducted by the National Toxicology Program (NTP)—the federal agency tasked with testing toxins—and was designed to be the final word on whether wireless radiation was harmful. It showed clear evidence of cancer and DNA damage linked to cell phone use.

Concentrated RiskSchools are particularly worrisome, experts say, because they are where the most intense concen-tration of wireless radiation is found today. The Wi-Fi systems schools have adopted are much more comprehensive than your average home or coffee shop Wi-Fi. These commercial grade systems use several routers or “access points” throughout the classroom, often in the ceiling above students’ heads. Now, add in all the ra-diation spewing from all the wireless devices operated by each student, and you’ll find that kids are spending up to seven hours per day in a thick soup of electro-smog.

Even worse, the people we place in this remark-ably concentrated field of wireless radiation are more vulnerable to it. Compared to adults, chil-dren are smaller and have smaller and thinner skulls so the radiation penetrates more easily and gets to larger parts of the brain. It is also problem-atic that children’s immune and nervous systems are still developing. Plus, kids’ cells divide at a faster rate, which increases the risk for mutations that can lead to cancer.

According to Pall, these factors make children more susceptible to the disease processes that wireless radiation has been consistently shown to cause: oxidative stress (which can lead to cancer and non-cancerous conditions, as well as DNA damage), sperm and testicular damage, neu-ropsychiatric effects, cell death, changes to the endocrine system, and calcium overload.

Evidence of IllnessThese disease processes aren’t merely theoreti-cal. Epidemiological studies conducted by Dr. Lennart Hardell, an oncologist at Orebro University Hospital in Sweden, showed that children exposed to this radiation are more likely to develop cancer and devel-op it quicker.

Other doctors and scientists say exposure is likely a signifi-cant contributing factor to the ris-ing rates of other childhood diseas-es. Dr. Hugh Taylor, a professor and chair of obstetrics, gynecology, and reproductive sciences at Yale University, has shown that fetal exposure to wireless radiation affects neuro-development and behavior and can lead to Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)— a condition that has doubled in the past 10 years.

Harvard Medical School professor and a pe-diatric neurologist at Massachusetts General Hospital, Dr. Martha Herbert, makes a compel-ling argument that the rise in autism spectrum disorders may also be related to our rise in wire-less radiation exposure.

Herbert’s 60-page report from 2012 doesn’t provide evidence of cause, but it does reveal several similarities between symptoms known to occur with wireless radiation and biological manifestations in autism, such as cellular stress, tissue damage, protein misfolding, and injury of membranes.

Herbert describes autism, not as a condition of a broken brain, but of a brain that has a hard time regulating itself. And she believes that if such a brain is caught in a cloud of wireless radiation, it is confronted with a disruptive factor, making it even harder for behavior and biology to come into balance.

While the brains of children with autism may be most vulnerable to microwave radiation, Herbert says every brain is at the mercy of its influence.

“I really am concerned about people’s brains,” Herbert said. “It’s not a joke to have this stuff getting into these three pounds of delicate, gel-crystalline structure in our heads that does this amazing stuff. It wasn’t meant for this level of exposure.”

Electromagnetic NeurologyHerbert explains that, just like our wireless devices, our brain communicates with elec-tromagnetic signaling. In fact, as our instru-ments have become more sensitive, scientists have discovered that each cell in our body uses electromagnetic signaling.

Now that we live in a wireless world, where

we all walk around in a field of electromagnetic radiation nearly all the time, Herbert believes there is enough scientific support to argue that this influence could be an important contribu-tor to degrading the optimal chemical-electrical function of our bodies—thereby detuning our brains and nervous systems.

Autism was once considered strictly a genetic abnormality. But as knowledge of the condition has grown, researchers have uncovered a more complex landscape, where a host of environ-mental influences have shown an impact on gene expression.

This means that instead of one smoking gun tied to this fast growing condition (the latest esti-mate from the Centers for Disease Control is that one in every 40 children has autism, up from one in every 166 in 2005), there are likely many fac-tors. Toxic chemicals, for example, have long been demonstrated to impact fetal brain development.

But Herbert argues that, due to electric nature of our bodies, wireless radiation may create more of a disruption than toxic chemicals.

“When you have a toxicant exposure, it can af-fect the brain, but it has to go through metabolic pathways that can influence the electromagnetics in order to do that,” Herbert said. “But when you have electromagnetic radiation, it’s a straight shot. It’s the same language, so it can be more instantaneous.”

Sick in SchoolsDafna Tachover is a former telecommunications officer turned lawyer who advocates for people harmed by wireless radiation. Her Supreme Court lawsuit in Israel led to the first limits on Wi-Fi in schools worldwide. Tachover showed evidence of 200 sick children from the Wi-Fi in just six schools.

Now in the United States, Tachover says she is contacted by several parents

every week with children who have become sick from their

school’s wireless sys-tem. She says the most

common symptoms include headaches, increased sensitiv-ity to noise, nose bleeds, concentra-tion and memory problems, nausea, exhaustion, and hyperactivity.

“Unfortunately, these harms are not

potential but exist-ing, and at an epidemic

scale,” Tachover said.The acute or chronic illness

that results from wireless radi-ation is known as electromagnetic

sensitivity. It’s the same illness the U.S. Navy dubbed “microwave sickness” when soldiers who had been working with technologies such as radar for extended periods of time displayed the same symptoms. The illness is named for the microwave frequencies that powers wire-less technology. Those who contract microwave sickness can’t be in the presence of wireless radia-tion without painful and sometimes debilitating symptoms.

One child Tachover is working with is a 13-year-old girl from Oregon whose desk was directly under the classroom’s Wi-Fi router. After she developed microwave sickness, her parents enrolled her in a private Waldorf school, because they’re one of few schools that don’t use Wi-Fi.

In some cases, parents are forced to homeschool their children because they can’t get access to schools without Wi-Fi. In other cases, sick kids are forced to make do.

Tachover said one parent had two sons who de-veloped microwave sickness. This mother urged her sons’ school to accommodate by hard wiring the classroom internet and even offered to pay for the accommodation, but the school refused. As a result, her children can only attend school for a few hours per week.

“When in the Wi-Fi environment they experi-ence headaches, concentration problems, skin rashes and hyperactivity,” Tachover said.

Risk to TeachersMicrowave sickness can impact teachers who work in Wi-Fi too. Laurie Brown, a teacher in the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), says she knew nothing about the health impacts from wireless until her school installed a com-mercial grade Wi-Fi system in April of 2015. To-day, she says the damage caused by this technol-ogy is impossible for her to ignore.

“We had Wi-Fi before, but the upgraded sys-tem now had two access points in every single classroom, adding a total of 290 access points to

Students are trading notebooks and textbooks for laptops, cell phones, iPads, and all manner of ‘smart’ devices.

3 5 C O U N T R I E S • 2 3 L A N G U A G E S

ReadEpoch.com

What Our Readers Say:

Subscribe @

It’s the only sane newspaper amidst all this insanity.

STAN K., PASTOR

You're presenting the facts and letting the

reader decide.TERRI B., BUSINESS OWNER

It's bringing morality back to newspapers.

LISSA T., BUSINESS OWNER

Everything I read in it is fair and balanced, compared to other newspapers.

JUNE V., RETIRED BANKER

It's the only paper that I know of right now that

actually gives you the honest, old fashioned journalism.

DRUE L., BUSINESS OWNER

TRUTH AND TRADITION

$1FIRST MONTH!

eggs were rehabilitated

as part of a healthy diet.

one of the best ways to maintain good skin health is to simply keep it hydrated.

pressMaster/shUtterstoCk alison Marras/Unsplash

all photos bY Unsplash

You Need To Know About

deBorah Mitchell

The first time I heard the term “nootropics,” I had no idea what it was. Was this a snazzy tropical drink with a little umbrella? Maybe a new exercise routine?

In fact, nootropics are drugs, supplements, or other substances believed to help improve brain function, a major consideration as our population grows older and the risk of Al-zheimer’s disease and other forms of demen-tia continue to grow. They can help improve cognitive abilities such as working memory, focus, attention, and decision-making.

Do Nootropics Really Work?Many experts feel that consuming nutrients for any health reason is typically best when they come from food rather than a supple-ment. One argument for that approach is that although you may be targeting one or two vi-tamins or minerals in a particular food for its brain-boosting abilities, those nutrients also work in sync with other substances, such as fiber, water, phytonutrients, and amino acids to provide health benefits. Supplements, how-ever, can be a great way to enhance or even take the place of what you can consume as food when necessary.

The Best Nootropics to ConsiderHere are dozen-plus foods and individual sup-plements that are touted as nootropics. These foods release sugar (glucose) slowly into the bloodstream, which helps to provide you with a steady supply of energy and thus a balanced level of awareness, cognition, and concentra-tion. Remember to include lots of these options in your diet!

Nootropic FoodsBlueBerries. These delicious blue orbs are loaded with anthocyanins, which have po-tent antioxidant powers that protect against an aging brain. A study appearing in the Annals of Neurology reported that greater intake of blueberries and strawberries was associated with slower rates of cognitive decline. Blue-berries beat out strawberries, although both performed well.

Dark chocolate. The rich supply of flavanols in the cocoa bean is the special ingredient behind the brain-enhancing power of dark chocolate. Cocoa has the ability to boost the area of the brain (dentate gyrus) where new brain cells are grown and also improves blood flow to the brain. To reap these benefits, you

need to consume dark chocolate that is at least 70 percent cocoa.

Dark leafy greens. Momma said to eat your spinach, and she was right. Spinach, along with kale, turnip and beet greens, collards, and mustard greens are packed with lutein and zeaxanthin, two potent antioxidants shown to improve brain function. In one study, for example, participants who had higher levels of lutein and zeaxanthin performed better on a working memory test, and their brains ap-peared to work more efficiently based on func-tional magnetic resonance imaging results.

eggs. The highly desirable brain-boosting nu-trient in eggs is choline, which has a large role in brain cell signaling. Choline also is the pre-cursor to acetylcholine, a critical neurotrans-mitter for healthy brain function, memory, deep sleep, and learning. Because the body is unable to produce a sufficient amount of cho-line on its own, you need to get it from food or supplements. The adequate intake for choline is 425 mg daily for women and 550 mg for men. One egg yolk contains 125 mg of choline.

fatty fish. The secret behind the connection between fish consumption and better brain health and function is omega-3 fatty acids. These fats are abundant in certain fish, including herring, sardines, wild salmon, and tuna. The main omega-3s are eicosapentaenoic acid, which is a potent anti-inflammatory; and docosahexaenoic acid, which is critical for healthy neurons.

green tea. Green tea provides support for the brain in several ways. One is caffeine, even though the amount is lower than found in black tea. The other brain-enhancing substances in green tea are catechin and L-theanine. Catechin is associated with better brain function while L-theanine is a cogni-tive booster that also helps relax you. In a re-cent review of 21 studies, experts determined that “green tea influences psychopathological symptoms,” including anxiety, brain function (working memory), and cognition (improved memory and attention).

turmeric. This versatile spice has been shown to boost working memory in humans with pre-diabetes. When cooking with turmeric, be sure to include some healthy fat and black

pepper in the dish, because they both boost absorption of the spice.

Nootropic SupplementsIf you want to complement your brain food intake, here are the nootropic supplements you can consider. Dosing should be discussed with a knowledgeable health care professional.

choline. The adequate intake is 425 mg daily for women (450 mg for pregnant women and 550 mg for lactating women) and 550 mg for men. The vast majority of people don’t get enough choline.

l-theanine. This amino acid is found in green tea and is often used to improve mental perfor-mance and managing anxiety. It is sometimes taken along with caffeine for these purposes. A suggested dose is 100 mg theanine. In com-bination, the range may be 30 to 100 mg of caffeine and 12 to 100 mg theanine.

lutein anD zeaxanthin. These two carotenoids (which places them

in the same category as beta-carotene and alpha-carotene) are potent antioxidants and helpful in preventing damage to brain cells. As a supplement,

they often appear together, in products targeted for eye health,

or as part of a multivitamin/mineral supplement. There are no set dosing re-

quirements for lutein and zeaxanthin, but a suggested dose is 10 mg/day of lutein and 2 mg/day of zeaxanthin.

tryptophan. An amino acid that is a precursor to melatonin, niacin (vitamin B3), and sero-tonin. This nutrient can help with depression, anxiety, insomnia, and memory. Suggested dosing is 2,000 to 3,000 mg daily.

Vitamin B12. Critical for the manufacture of DNA, RNA, and neurotransmitters, which are necessary for optimal brain function. The RDA for vitamin B12 is 2.4 micrograms for adults. However, supplementation of 25 to 100 mcg daily is suggested for adults older than 50 because they do not absorb food-bound B12 efficiently.

Deborah Mitchell is a freelance health writer. She has authored, co-authored, and writ-ten more than 50 books and thousands of articles on a wide range of topics. This article was first published on NaturallySavvy.com

Why Moisturizing Your Skin Helps

Prevent Age-Related Diseases

Our skin is our largest organ and it’s health goes deeper than most people realize

dan graY

It makes sense that moisturizing the skin is the best way to keep it from getting dry and itchy.

But what if there is a link between dry skin and a host of age-related diseases?

Researchers from the University of Califor-nia–San Francisco (UCSF) have concluded that age-damaged skin could be a contributing factor to a number of age-related conditions such as heart disease and Alzheimer’s disease.

In research published earlier this month in the Journal of the European Academy of Der-matology and Venereology, scientists described their observations in studying older adults at the San Francisco Veterans Administration Health System.

“Aged humans exhibit chronic, subclinical systemic inflammation, commonly termed ‘in-flamm-aging’, which has been further linked to the downstream emergence of a variety of age-associated chronic disorders, including cardio-vascular diseases, Type 2 diabetes, osteoporosis and Alzheimer’s disease,” Dr. Mao-Qiang Man, the study’s senior author and dermatologist at UCSF, explained to Healthline.

To understand this, it helps to understand what cytokines are.

These small proteins are released by the body’s immune system to signal inflammation in dam-aged areas of the skin.

If enough of them get into the circulatory sys-tem, the “inflamm-aging” process begins. Older adults are more prone to this because their skin is more prone to damage.

After the UCSF study concluded, researchers found that seniors who used three milliliters of skin cream to moisturize, twice a day, had significantly fewer cytokines linked to chronic diseases.

Dr. Gayatri Devi, a neurologist at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York and author of a book on Alzheimer’s disease, told Healthline that it’s long been understood that inflammatory markers are associated with pathological changes as-sociated with aging such as cardiovascular and Alzheimer’s disease.

“The idea of using a simple treatment like a skin emollient as one way to reduce age-asso-ciated inflammation is both intriguing and ap-pealing, and worth further evaluation,” she said.

Another expert interviewed by Healthline says that the research highlights the importance of properly moisturized skin—especially in older adults.

Thin Skin and AgingSkin is our largest organ and the main barrier between our insides and the outside world. But skin health isn’t always in mind when it comes time to see a doctor.

One of the best ways to maintain good skin health is to simply keep it hydrated.

“From a best-practice standpoint, it’s abso-lutely important for patients—whether they’re younger or older—to try to moisturize the skin,”

explained Dr. Susan Massick, a dermatologist at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Cen-ter. “Basic hydration helps preserve the barrier of the skin, the barrier to the outside world. It’s important to maintain that aspect, particularly for older folks who have a more difficult time in terms of maintaining moisture to the skin.”

So what exactly happens to our skin as we age?For starters, gravity tends to take over and the

skin loses its elasticity. This can thin the skin out and hinder its ability to maintain proper moisturization.

Then there’s the fact that merely exposing our skin to the outside world has negative long-term effects.

“As we age, you’ll see more issues with regard to the long-term effects of ultraviolet light on the skin,” said Massick. “There’s thinning of the skin, slower healing, easy bruising, but more importantly, concerns about skin cancers and melanomas. There are also chronic, inflamma-tory conditions like eczema and psoriasis that continue on at any age range, but can certainly be more of a struggle as we get older.”

Moisturize the Right WayWhile the UCSF study had a relatively small co-hort, the results carry an important practical lesson: moisturizing is important, particularly for older adults.

The study participants had highly specific moisturizing instructions. In everyday practice, it isn’t necessary to be this exact.

For starters, says Massick, it’s best to clean the body using unscented soaps and body washes, as the products with fragrances and perfumes tend to contain irritants that can negatively af-fect the skin.

When it comes to using moisturizing products, it’s best to use items with specific traits.

“The creams tend to be more moisturizing than lotions because they have more lipids and oils in them, so they provide more hydration to the skin,” said Massick.

As for the best time to moisturize, Massick recommends doing so right after getting out of the bath or shower because it helps to maintain the moisture that’s already in the skin after a good soak.

Finally, it’s important to remember that too much heat can dry the body out.

“In the shower, it’s best to avoid the really hot water that tends to dry people out. That’s why patients have more difficulty with dry skin in the winter because they’ve got the heat on and they’re taking hot showers,” explained Massick.

Man, the study’s senior author, said that prop-er moisturization is one of the biggest takeaways of the study.

“Using safe and effective products to take care of your skin could benefit health, particularly for the elderly and subjects with certain conditions such as psoriasis and atopic dermatitis,” he said.

The Bottom LineAging can negatively affect the skin in all sorts of ways.

Overly dry and irritated skin can even create conditions that contribute to the development of certain diseases.

Patients who want to maintain properly mois-turized skin should take steps to apply moistur-izer regularly and see a dermatologist if there are concerns.

Dan Gray is a freelance journalist. This article was first published on Healthline.

Unscrambling the Message

Continued from Page 7

In 1916, a Dutch physician Cornelis De Langen noted that the Dutch in Java, an island in Indonesia, had atherosclerosis (plaque build-up inside the arteries) and cardiovascular disease, but this was uncom-mon in the Javanese on their native diet, which was mainly based on plant foods with a few eggs a week. He linked high blood cholesterol to heart disease and showed that putting the Javanese on a Dutch diet increased their blood cholesterol by about one millimole per liter (mmol/L), which is quite a large effect.

Most adults in North America, Europe, and Aus-tralasia have moderately increased blood cholesterol levels as a result of middle-aged spread, saturated fat intake and, to some extent, cholesterol intake. Randomized controlled trials in which participants are fed increasing amounts of eggs have found that each 200mg of cholesterol from eggs increases the harmful form of blood cholesterol, low-density lipo-protein (LDL), by only 0.1mmol/L, about a 3 percent increase. But dietary cholesterol also enhances the LDL cholesterol-raising effect of saturated fat.

Meat eaters who reduce their saturated fat in-

E G G S A n d H E A L t H

Fragrances and perfumes tend to contain irritants that can negatively affect the skin.

take can expect to lower their LDL cholesterol by 0.3mmol/L. But LDL cholesterol is typically 2.4mmol/L in vegans, who consume no cholesterol and have low intakes of saturated acids, compared with meat eaters where the average is 3.5mmol/L.

Not the Same Risk for EveryoneBetween a quarter and a third of the population inherit a version (an “allele”, in the jargon) of the APOE gene called e4 that makes them much more sensitive to dietary cholesterol than those who carry the more common e3 allele. They can show a 10 percent increase in LDL cholesterol with dietary cholesterol from eggs.

There is also variability on how much cholesterol is absorbed. Most of the cholesterol in the small intestine is derived from bile secreted from the liver rather than from eggs. Plant sterols, which are added to some foods, such as yogurt drinks and marga-rine, block cholesterol absorption and lower LDL cholesterol by up to 10 percent. So even people who carry the e4 allele can eat eggs without increasing their LDL cholesterol if they consume plant sterols in the same meal.

The American diet contains large amounts of meat

and eggs, and it seems probable that a high intake of cholesterol (about 600mg per day, equal to two to three eggs a day) adds to the risk of cardiovascular disease, particularly in people with Type 2 diabetes. There is also good reason to caution younger people about the risks of following the fad of high-protein diets that may include eating several eggs a day. Otherwise, eating eggs in moderation (three to four eggs a week) makes a useful contribution to nutrient intake and is harmless.

Tom Sanders is an emeritus professor of nutrition & dietetics at King’s College London in the United Kingdom. This article was first published on The Conversation.

In the United States, eggs are

often eaten with bacon, sausages,

or burgers, so it’s impossible to disentangle the effects on car-

diovascular dis-ease risk.

Nootropics

Green tea influences psychopathological

symptoms like anxiety, brain function, and cognition.

These brain boosters come in many shapes and flavors

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 14, 2019 B3

I Lived on the Brink of Death for Decades, and Then Everything ChangedSuicide seemed the only answer to this ailing mother until one fateful day a miracle began

FENGYING MAO

Before moving overseas and relocating to Toronto in 1997, I was a nurse in China, yet also a patient—I suffered endlessly from devastating illnesses. This is the story of my medical miracle: from living on the brink of death for nearly 20 years to getting a second chance at life.

If you’ve never suffered from a long-term chronic disease, it can be difficult to un-derstand the soul-crushing suffering that is involved.

For 18 years I suffered from hepatitis C—known by doctors as one of the most difficult illnesses to cure. My body felt like a cage and my life was reduced to hospital visits, taking medication, searching endlessly for cures and specialists and fantasizing of a way to alleviate my symptoms.

Sometimes I was hospitalized for up to six months, but despite being treated by China’s most renowned doctors, they could only manage the symptoms and couldn’t control the disease. Desperate, I added every alterna-tive method I could find—qigong, traditional Chinese medicine, herbal remedies, praying to Buddha, and on and on. Nothing worked.

Every day I could expect to feel constant pain in my liver and spleen as my liver turned to scar tissue from cirrhosis. This caused abdominal swelling that made it look like I was several months’ pregnant; even wearing a belt was excruciating. I also experienced crippling nausea, extreme fatigue, depression, bleeding gums, and endless other symptoms. Not only did the old diseases get worse, but new ones also developed: atrophic gastritis, pyelitis, ne-phritis, and low blood pressure. My body was extremely weak and my legs were swol-len and heavy. Walking up the stairs to my apartment felt like climbing a mountain. To add to the agony, my daughter, who was diagnosed with hepatitis from birth, was also diagnosed with liver cirrhosis by the age of six. Watching her suffer was unbearable.

I worked as a surgical nurse in China, and had easy access to medication and saw some of the best doctors in the country. We tried every conceivable treatment and exhaust-ed all options, yet my illness could not be brought under control. I had worked on and off as I could manage but by 1996 I was forced to quit my job permanently due to my failing health. Since I had some medical knowledge, I knew that my situation was critical. One day I drew up the courage to ask my doctor how long he thought I would live. He looked at me with pain in his eyes and said softly, “I think at least one more year.”

Despite being in my early 30s, I appeared thin and frail and could easily be mistaken for someone twice my age. Due to my ad-vanced illness, my father, already in his 80s, was forced to care for my daughter and I when my husband went to study in the United States. Overwhelmed by pain, lone-liness, and depression, I was so miserable that I couldn’t control my temper, lashing out at everyone around me. Even though my father and daughter were also in poor health, I often screamed at them and beat my child. I had truly lost control. Sometimes I stared at myself in the mirror, thinking, ‘who have I become?’

One afternoon, as I struggled to endure the pain in my body, I had the thought to jump out the window of my fourth-floor apartment. I could end it all right now, I thought. No more pain, no more hospitals, no more loneliness. Then I looked over at my father and daughter sitting on the couch. They looked so pitiful, how could I abandon them? Tears streamed down my face as I con-templated my life—how could I have ended up here? I cursed God for my misfortune, and for forcing me to live on the brink of death. My hopelessness felt like a pitch-black well that I constantly tried to crawl out of.

The surprising part was that through al-most two decades of pain, tears, and heart-break deep down I still had a sense of cher-ishing life. I desperately wanted to watch my daughter grow up with my beloved husband by my side. My heart ached for a resolution so that I could finish my life’s to-do list: go back to my fulfilling career, move overseas to be with my husband, and care for my father and child like nature intended.

A Second ChanceJuly 22, 1996, is a day I will never forget—a day that my fate changed. That morning, I happened to run into an elderly lady who used to live in my neighbor-hood. Her eyes filled with pity and compassion as

Fengying Mao with her husband, daughter, and son.

Fengying Mao with her daughter and son, after she started to practice a qigong practice called Falun Gong.

FENGYING MAO

UNSP

LASH

FENGYING MAO

ELEVATE AND INSPIRE

she looked at me—broken, frail and in pain. She told me about how she too had suffered from chronic illnesses but when she started a new qigong practice called Falun Gong, also know as Falun Dafa, her diseases—cholecys-titis and hepatitis B—disappeared.

I had tried other forms of qigong in the past, and they did nothing to help me. I didn’t believe in qigong but I was desper-ate, and curious about how this woman had overcome all her health problems, so I decided to give it a try. After all, I didn’t have anything to lose and the practice was taught for free.

At six o’clock the next morning I went to a local Falun Gong practice site with my 9-year-old daughter. We learned the exercises and borrowed the book “Zhuan Falun,” which describes the philosophy of the practice.

I found the book very interesting—it an-swered so many of the questions I had: the root causes of illness, the connection be-tween body and mind, and how to elevate the body physically by elevating your character.

Over the next few days, I continued go-ing to the practice site and reading Zhuan Falun and completely forgot about curing my illnesses. Yet, every day my symptoms improved. I was able to stop taking my medications yet I felt better and better. I felt light when I walked, it was easy to climb the stairs. My mood completely transformed. The relief and excitement I felt are hard to describe. It was like being placed in a brand new body.

One month later my daughter and I had a general physical exam. The results were beyond my wildest dreams: all the abnor-malities in my body had returned to normal. My daughter also got a clean bill of health. The illnesses that had held me hostage for 18 years were gone in a matter of weeks. My doctor was shocked and didn’t know what to say. Having no medical explanation, and afraid to acknowledge the medical miracle, he left the room and didn’t come back.

A New LifeAs it turned out, my physical changes were just the start of my change in fortune. Now that I was healthy, I could join my husband in the United States and raise our daughter in a free country. Seeing my dramatic change, my husband started practicing Falun Gong as well.

I felt like the most fortunate woman in the world, and then I received the most incred-ible news yet—I found out I was pregnant. Due to my previous illnesses, I hadn’t had a men-strual period for years and it was impossible for someone with my condition to conceive. Yet now, my body was so strong and healthy that I delivered a beautiful baby boy in 1997. When they got the news, all my relatives in China found it too incredible. Even now, they think I must have adopted my son.

If I hadn’t experienced all of this myself, I would have found it hard to believe. Yet there is no other way for me to explain the dramatic changes in my body after prac-ticing Falun Gong. I feel so grateful for the second chance at life.UNSPLASH

If you’ve never suffered from a long-term chronic disease, it can be difficult to understand the soul-crushing suffering.

It was like being placed in a brand new body.

TRUTH and TRADITION

ReadEpoch.comSUBSCRIBE TODAY

A NEWSPAPER ABRAHAM LINCOLN

WOULD READ

TRUTH and TRADITION

ReadEpoch.comSUBSCRIBE TODAY

TRUTH and TRADITION

ReadEpoch.comSUBSCRIBE TODAY

A NEWSPAPER GEORGE

WASHINGTON WOULD READ

TRUTH and TRADITION

ReadEpoch.comSUBSCRIBE TODAY

Week 14, 2019 Week 14, 201910 | MIND & BODY MIND & BODY | 11

gigen MaMMoser

Burgers, gas stations, and fried chicken—it’s hard to find nutritious food in low-income neighborhoods.

Supermarkets and groceries are rare. You might have to travel miles to find fresh fruit and vegetables. Fast food, on the other hand, is plentiful.

So what do you make for dinner?For families in search of healthier op-

tions, even in these so-called “food des-erts,” turning to bargain or “dollar” chain stores could be the best option.

In a new study, published in the In-ternational Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, researchers at the University of Nevada–Las Vegas (UNLV), looked at the quality of produce and other healthy food options at dis-count stores and found that, well, it’s pretty good.

In fact, the fruits and vegetables at dol-lar stores are just as good as what you’d find at a regular grocery store. Food was

generally priced com-parably as well, and sometimes cheaper.

Expanding OptionsResearchers say the findings have real implications for nutrition and public health.

“By recognizing these outlets as com-munity assets, we can expand the op-tions within the community food envi-ronment for public health outreach and interventions,” Courtney Coughenour, first author and assistant professor in the School of Community Health Sciences, UNLV, told Healthline.

“Cost, quality, and availability are es-tablished barriers to healthy eating. Rec-ognition of these stores as part of the food system may expand access to some who might not have otherwise had it, and/or provide a less expensive alternative.”

Coughenour and her colleagues in-dexed every grocery store in the met-

ropolitan Las Vegas area. Using general definitions of the types of stores (national or regional chain groceries, for example) they looked at the availability of different types of foods, their prices, and quality.

Using a tool called the Nutrition En-vironment Measures Survey in Stores (NEMS-S), researchers assigned stores different scores based on these factors and compared them.

The NEMS-S system divides produce into two categories. “Acceptable” is de-fined as top quality, fresh produce that is firm and clean. “Unacceptable” produce is bruised, old, mushy, cracked, or moldy.

As might be expected, traditional gro-cery stores scored significantly higher in “availability,” indicating a wide va-riety of fruits and vegetables, as well as

healthier options of other types of food such as whole-grain bread.

However, in terms of quality, discount stores held their own.

There was “not a significant difference in the quality of fresh fruits and vegeta-bles,” wrote the authors.

High Quality, Lower CostAt a discount store, you’ll also likely pay less.

According to the research, nearly 85 percent of produce and 90 percent of non-produce items were significantly less expensive compared to traditional grocery stores.

“While they have fewer options, they are a source of high quality, more af-fordable options. If you are on a budget,

or just simply shopping for your fam-ily, shopping at dollar discount stores that sell produce can result in savings,” said Coughenour. “And for those who are brand loyal, there are additional studies out there that find nutritional equivalency from on-brand and off-brand products.”

Nutrition is a vital part of public health, yet access to good quality food for low-in-come individuals can be problematic. To-day 11.5 million individuals in the United States live in areas that are more than a mile from the nearest grocery store. Liv-ing in these “food deserts” makes eating healthy more difficult.

According to Coughenour, her re-search highlights the importance of discount stores as a way to help bridge the gap for low-income neighborhoods and gain access to better quality food.

“Some of the cheapest foods in the world are some of the healthiest. Beans are a great example of this and can be found dry or canned in many dollar stores. Frozen fruits and vegetables without any added sugars are also an example, and finally, many whole grains can be purchased at dollar stores, par-ticularly brown rice.” Kristin Kirkpat-rick, a licensed, registered dietitian, told Healthline.

She added, “The key is knowing what to do with these ingredients. Many of my patients would eat more beans if they knew how to prepare them, or have the idea that frozen vegetables are inferior to fresh, which in many instances is not the case. Education is key.”

Gigen Mammoser is a freelance journalist. This article was originally published on Healthline.

A Simple Mindful

Method to deal With tiredness,

Loneliness, and Stress

leo BaBauta

A loved one has been going through a hard time, dealing with tiredness, stress, and loneliness, and my heart goes out to them as it does anyone going through such struggles.

These difficult emotions can break your heart.

There is a fairly simple method that can help when we are faced with these powerful feelings and the difficulties that bring them. I offer it to you as something to practice and test out.

Here’s the method, to practice if you’re feeling stress, frustration, loneliness, sad-ness, tiredness:

1. Notice that you’re feeling this difficult emotion, and notice how it feels in your body. Bring a sense of curiosity to the sensations, just being present with them for a moment.

2. Notice what thoughts you have in your head that are causing the emotion. For example, you might be thinking, “They shouldn’t treat me like that” or “Why does my job have to be so hard?” or “These people are stressing me out! Things should be more settled and or-derly.” Or something like that. Just no-tice whatever thoughts you have. Maybe write them down.

3. Notice that the thoughts are causing your difficulty. Not the situation—the thoughts. You might not believe that at first, but see if you can investigate whether that’s true.

4. Ask yourself, “What would it be like if I didn’t have these thoughts right now? What would my experience be right now?” The simple answer is that you’re just having an experience. It is a mo-ment in time, not good or bad.

5. In fact, while this experience is nei-ther good nor bad, you can start to ap-preciate it for what it is, without the thoughts. See it as a fresh experience, maybe even appreciate the beauty of the moment. Maybe you can even love the moment just as it is.

Obviously, some of these might take some practice. But it’s worth it because while you might not be able to get rid of tiredness, you can let go of the thoughts about the tiredness that make it so much worse. You might not be able to get rid of the loneliness, but you can let go of the downward spiral of thoughts and emotions that make it overwhelming.

And just maybe, you can find some love for your experience in this moment. Yes, you feel tired, but you can love the tired-ness, and everything else in this moment, without needing anything to change.

Leo Babauta is the author of six books, the writer of “Zen Habits,” a blog with over 2 million subscribers, and the creator of several online programs to help you master your habits. Visit ZenHabits.net

From Playground Risks to College Admissions

nicole racine & sheri Madigan

The extreme and even illegal measures parents will take to ensure their children are successful has come into sharp focus after allegations that wealthy and sometimes famous parents had paid for their children to gain entrance to the

most prestigious post-secondary institutions in the United States.

Parenting trends that protect children from negative experiences and failure are far from new. The concept of “helicopter parenting” emerged in the 1980s to describe overly anxious parents who hover over their children to keep them safe.

A second parenting trend called “intensive parenting” was later coined to describe overly invested parents who spend unprecedented amounts of time and money on their children’s activities and well-being to ensure they have the best start in life.

More recently, “snowplow” or “bulldozer” parenting de-scribes parents who are hyper-focused on their child’s future and will do anything to eliminate barriers to their children’s success. The parents allegedly engaged in the U.S. college entrance scandal would be a prime example.

Ultimately, the goal of these parenting styles is to reduce a child’s exposure to hurt, distress, failure or difficult life experience. But in the end, does this help or hinder kids? If they don’t experience adversity, how will they ever know how to overcome it when they inevitably face it in life?

Bubble-Wrapping Kids Doesn’t WorkResearch has shown that helicopter or bulldozer style par-enting is associated with poor outcomes in children and adolescents, including mental health difficulties and low life satisfaction.

Children of helicopter and bulldozer parents also have been shown to be less resilient. For example, they do not

seem to develop some of the coping skills required to solve problems independently.

College students who described their parents as helicop-ter parents show decreased confidence in their ability to succeed.

In contrast, parents who support their child’s autonomy by valuing their perspective and promoting independent problem-solving do better academically and have better mental health and well-being.

When Kids Fail, It Builds ConfidenceResilience has been defined as the ability to bounce back from life challenges or difficulties and is a characteristic that is learned and fostered over time. By definition, then, a child needs to experience adversity to learn to overcome it.

Children rely on supportive relationships and experiences within their families, schools, and communities to help them develop the necessary skills to successfully navigate minor challenges and problems. When these are present, overcoming challenges or “bouncing back” is easier to do.

The types of adversity children can experience vary from mild to severe. For children, mild forms of adversity can in-clude going to a new school or camp or meeting new people. Moderate stress can include more serious events, such as natural disasters or losing a loved one. Severe stress or toxic stress includes abuse and neglect.

Of course, we want to shelter and protect children from moderate and severe stresses as much as possible. Research is clear that experiencing high levels of adversity like abuse and neglect in childhood are associated with poor health and development.

But what about small, everyday difficulties like losing a game, failing at an activity, doing poorly on a test or strug-gling to learn something new? These are the types of stresses that we need to allow our children to experience, and with our help, learn to overcome. Research shows this builds up their ability to be resilient.

Tips for Promoting Resilience in Children1. Foster a loving and positive relationship with your child,

one where they feel safe to reach out to you when they need help rather than trying to tackle a problem alone.

2. Help your child develop other relationships in their fami-lies and communities that are supportive and caring. Healthy relationships with extended family neighbors, coaches, teachers, and friends can help buffer the child from mild, moderate and severe forms of adversity.

3. Model and support problem-solving. Our first instinct is often to jump in to resolve or fix our child’s problem. Instead, try to step back, focus on the process and help your child find a few solutions to their problem. Get them to pick what they think is the best solution, and then once they implement it, ask them how they think it went and what they might do differently next time.

4. Encourage children to participate in extra-curricular activities that take them out of their comfort zone, or involve the development of a new skill. This is mildly stressful for children but gives them an opportunity to try something new and learn from the experience, while being supported in the process.

5. Help your child to develop confidence by praising them honestly for hard work and persistence. Reward the pro-cess, not the outcome.

The American Psychological Association Resilience Guide for Parents and Teachers provides further background and tips.

Nicole Racine is a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Calgary in Canada and Sheri Madigan is an assistant professor and Canada research chair in determinants of child development at the Owerko Centre at the Alberta Children’s Hospital Research Institute at the University of Calgary. This article was first published on The Conversation.

dollar Stores Sell Produce Just as Good as Expensive ChainsFood deserts may find an oasis at an unlikely place—the local dollar store

Your Relationship May Be Better Than You ThinkOur negativity balance can steal the good experiences in our relationships

garY W. leWandoWski Jr.

There’s an old saying, “When you reach the end of your rope, tie a knot in it and hang on.” In other words, before you give up, take matters into your own hands and try a little harder.

As a psychology researcher, I believe this adage applies to relationships, too. Before you let go, look for the “knots” that might save you from accidentally letting a great relationship slip from your grasp. Relationship science sug-gests that the problem is that people tend to overemphasize the negative and underappreci-ate the positive when looking at their romantic partners.

If you could build the perfect relationship, what would it look like? Perhaps more impor-tantly, how does your current relationship stack up? Expectations for today’s relationships are higher than ever. Now that relationships are a choice, mediocrity isn’t acceptable. It’s all or nothing, and no one wants to settle.

The secret to avoiding settling seems simple: have high standards and demand only the very best. Researchers refer to people who are pickier than others and always want the absolute best possible option as maximizers. Their counter-parts are satisficers—those satisfied once quality surpasses a minimum threshold of accept-ability. For them, “good enough” is perfectly fine. As long as their relationship exceeds their predetermined benchmarks for “high quality,” satisficers are content.

Maximizer personalities will tend to exhaust all options and explore many possibilities to secure the flawless partner. You might think that sounds ideal, even noble, almost like com-mon sense. But there are hidden downsides. Call it the myth of maximization, because research reveals that maximizers report more regret and depression and feel threatened by others whom they perceive as doing better. Maximizers also experience lower self-esteem and less opti-mism, happiness and life satisfaction. And they prefer reversible decisions or outcomes that are not absolute or final.

See the problem? In long-term relationships, people tend to prefer more of a “‘til death do us part” approach rather than a “’til I find some-thing better” tactic. Overall, the implication for your relationship is clear: The continuous pursuit of perfection could be fine for a car, but in your relationship, it may result in failing to recognize the truly great relationship that’s right in front of you for what it is. Impossibly high standards can make an excellent relation-ship seem average.

You may also undervalue your relationship by being too quick to identify imperfections, notice the negatives and find problems. Blame what psychologists call the negativity bias, which is a tendency to pay attention to the bad or negative aspects of an experience.

In other words, when your relationship is going well, it doesn’t register. You take it for granted. But problems? They capture your at-tention. The bickering, insensitive comments, forgotten chores, the messes, and the inconve-niences—all stand out because they deviate from the easily overlooked happy status quo.

This tendency is so pronounced that when a relationship doesn’t have any major issues, research suggests that people inflate small problems into bigger ones. Rather than being thankful for the relative calm, people manufac-ture problems where none previously existed.

You could be your own worst enemy without even realizing it.

Time to recalibrate. The key is separating the critical from the inconsequential in order to distinguish minor issues from real problems. Identifying the true dealbreakers will allow you to save your energy for real problems, and allow the minor stuff to simply fade away.

Data from a representative sample of over 5,000 Americans, ranging in age from 21 to over 76, identified the top 10 relationship dealbreakers:

1. Disheveled or unclean appearance2. Lazy3. Too needy4. Lacks a sense of humor5. Lives more than three hours away6. Bad sex7. Lacks self-confidence8. Too much TV/video games9. Low sex drive10. Stubborn

Beyond that list, there are certainly annoyances that can become dealbreakers in otherwise gen-erally healthy relationships. And if your partner disrespects, hurts or abuses you, those are behaviors that shouldn’t be ignored and should rightly end your relationship.

In a follow-up study, researchers asked participants to consider both dealbreakers and dealmakers—that is, qualities that are especially appealing. When determining whether a rela-tionship was viable, it turned out the dealbreak-ers carried more weight. The negativity bias strikes again. The fact that people tend to focus more on the breakers than the makers is further evidence that we’re not giving some aspects of our relationship enough credit.

To help you better appreciate your partner’s good qualities, consider the qualities individuals find most desirable in a marriage partner.

What have you been missing in your relation-ship? Surely there are boxes that your partner checks that you’ve neglected to notice. Start giving credit where credit is due.

In fact, some studies suggest you should give your partner even more credit than she or he might deserve. Instead of being realistic, give your partner the benefit of the doubt, with an overly generous appraisal. Would you be lying to yourself? Sure, a little bit. But research shows that these types of positive illusions help the re-lationship by decreasing conflict while increas-ing satisfaction, love, and trust.

Holding overly optimistic views of your part-ner convinces you of their value, which reflects well on you—you’re the one who has such a great partner, after all. Your rose-colored opinions also make your partner feel good and give them a good reputation to live up to. They won’t want to let you down so they’ll try to fulfill your positive prophecy. All of which benefits your relationship.

It’s time to stop being overly critical of your relationship. Instead find the knots, the parts of your relationship you’ve been taking for granted that will help you hold on. If you know where to look and what to appreciate, you may just real-ize there are a lot more reasons to happily hold onto your relationship than you thought.

Gary W. Lewandowski Jr. is a professor of psychology at Monmouth University in New Jersey. This article was first published on The Conversation.

Failure Helps Build Kids’ Resilience

it’s worth focusing on the dealmakers not just dealbreakers.

Fruits and vegetables at dollar stores are just as good as what you’d find at a regular grocery store.

ChekYravaa/shUtterstoCk

all photos bY shUtterstoCk

JaCob lUnD/shUtterstoCk

WISE HaBItS

People tend to overemphasize the negative and underap-preciate the positive when looking at their romantic partners.

When a relationship doesn’t have any major issues, research suggests that people inflate small problems into bigger ones.

Notice what thoughts you have in your head that are causing the emotion.

If they don’t experience adversity, how will they ever

know how to overcome it?

tYle

r n

ix/U

nsp

lash

Week 14, 201912 | MIND & BODY

Healing Through Your Sense of SmellThe impact of scent on the brain offers unobtrusive remedies for some ailments

lYnn Jaffee

Lately, my sense of smell has been fooling me. I’ve been haunted by a scent that’s not actually there. It’s kind of funky, but not awful, kind of like what I imagine a cold sweat would be.

This smell that doesn’t actually exist first ap-peared about a year and a half ago during a very stressful time in my life. At first, I thought it was me, but sometimes I would smell it right after I’d had a shower. I asked the people around me if they smelled what I was smelling, and no one did. Ultimately, I realized that was I was experi-encing phantosmia or olfactory hallucinations.

When I realized that I was the only one detect-ing this smell, it kind of freaked me out. But over time I’ve come to realize that it’s a weird response to stress. I only smell it when I’m acutely stressed. When all is good, the smell is gone. Go figure.

I’m telling you about my phantom smell because it’s easy to forget that your sense of smell and your brain are connected. This con-nection can be a powerful tool for healing, and is the foun-dation of aromatherapy. In the same way that guided visualization or music supports healing through sound, and massage heals through touch, the use of scents can be therapeutic as well.

Scent can affect your brain in a variety of ways. In fact, research has shown that one of the most powerful triggers for memories is through your sense of smell. When you detect a scent, those molecules stimulate the nerves in your nose, which trigger electrical impulses in the olfactory area of

your brain. Those impulses are then transmitted to the amygdala, an area of your brain where memories are stored.

In Chinese medicine, the sense of smell is used in a number of ways. Odors can be a helpful diagnostic tool. If a patient has a strong smell, it can be a tip-off to a number of conditions. If they’re sweating, the smell and nature of when and how they sweat offers up clues. If a patient’s breath has an odor, it’s up to the practitioner to determine if the smell is coming from

shUtterstoCk

dental problems, lung issues, or poor digestion.Here’s a short list of some of the ways that

scent, or aromatherapy, is used for healing:

• Moxibustion is a Chinese therapy that uses burning herbs to warm and increase circu-lation. The herb, artemisia, that’s used in moxibustion has a strong and penetrating smell, which is part of its therapeutic purpose; to warm, penetrate, and circulate.

• In Chinese herbal medicine, both the taste and scent of the herbs used are a part of the healing effect. This is most notable in the class of aromatic herbs that are prescribed to alleviate dampness, a condition of poor water metabolism.

• Mint, eucalyptus, menthol, and camphor are used in the clinic to help treat a cold or the flu. In addition, these scents are especially effec-

tive for nasal stuffiness, and may also be used in treating patients with allergies.•Floral scents, such as rose or ylang-

ylang are considered to be calming and relaxing. Lavender is well-

known for its relaxing properties and ability to promote sleep.• Citrus scents, such as orange

or lemon are considered to be energizing and may be helpful in treating fatigue.

The bottom line is that what you smell can have an effect on your brain in a number of ways. While the effect of scents may be subtle they can be used to evoke strong memories, instill calm, promote sleep, energize, and support the healing process.

Lynn Jaffee is a licensed acu-puncturist and the author of

“Simple Steps: The Chinese Way to Better Health.” This article

was originally published on Acu-punctureTwinCities.com

Scent can affect your brain in a variety of ways.

Lavender is well-known for its

relaxing properties and ability to

promote sleep.

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 2019B8

Chinese New Year’s ‘Human Day’ Celebrates ‘Birthday’ of Humankind

ESSENCEOF CHINA

SM YANG/THE EPOCH TIMES

ZHICHING CHEN/THE EPOCH TIMES

ANCIENT CHINESE STORIES

CINDY CHAN

B irthdays are special occasions that hold a great deal of meaning for many people. Often a time of celebration,

a birthday also offers a chance for renewal and reinvigoration as we aspire to greater things and look forward to a bright year ahead. It also represents an opportunity to reflect and have our gratitude grow for the joys and blessings in our lives.

For the ancient Chinese people, this an-nual occasion occurred not only on the an-niversary of their birth but also on another special day known as “renri,” which falls on the seventh day of the Chinese New Year.

Literally “Human Day,” renri is the day on which it is said that the goddess Nu Wa created human beings. Also called the Day of Humankind, renri is regarded in ancient Chinese tradition as the common “birthday” of all humans.

The custom of celebrating renri dates back to the Han Dynasty (206 B.C.–A.D. 220). The 2019 Chinese New Year fell on Feb. 5, thus placing renri on Feb. 11.

According to one version of the ancient leg-end, Nu Wa came to the world many thou-sands of years after the god Pan Gu created the world.

Pan Gu had himself worked tirelessly for many thousands of years, standing between the sky and the Earth and pushing them far-

ther and farther apart as his body grew larger and larger. After the separation of sky and Earth became stable, Pan Gu fell down ex-hausted. He went to sleep and never awoke.

When he died, he dedicated his entire body to the world’s future beings. For ex-ample, his head transformed into moun-

tains, his eyes formed the sun and moon, his hair turned into plants and trees, and his blood became the oceans.

Creation of Human BeingsThen Nu Wa appeared, and it is believed that she first made six animals and then created human beings.

From the first to the sixth day of the Chi-nese New Year, she created the chicken, dog, boar, sheep, cow, and horse.

Then on Day 7, Nu Wa sat by the edge of a pond and, looking at her own reflection, began to mix clay with water to create small figures in her own image, both males and females.

She blew her breath upon the figures be-fore placing them on the ground, thus giving them souls, and was delighted when they became alive.

Every day, Nu Wa made more human beings and cherished them. She imparted wisdom to them and created musical instru-ments so that they could make music and express themselves through dance and song.

This paved the way for human culture to develop, whereby people were able to prop-erly govern themselves and continue to im-prove their lives.

To ensure that humans lived on after the elderly died from old age, Nu Wa established the system of marriage so that men and women could live together and start fami-lies. In this way, human beings were able to sustain their own existence generation after generation.

The number of lives went on to become countless. Each has its own story, much like the lives unfolding in a vivid cherished novel.

So renri is not only a festival for wishing a happy birthday to all of humankind, but it is also a time to commemorate Nu Wa with a deep sense of gratitude.

Human Day is also a reminder for human beings to live by upright principles as good people, and to treasure their relationships and other lives, so as to honor their creator and indeed humankind’s own creation.

The Day of Humankind, ‘renri’ is regarded in ancient Chinese tradition as the common ‘birthday’ of all humans.

The god Pang Gu holds up the sky,

firmly separating it from the earth. When he died, he dedicated his entire body to the

world’s future beings.

The goddess Nu Wa created human beings. She also imparted wis-dom to them and paved the way for them to develop human culture.

• Unlimited access on desktop, tablet, and mobile• Weekly home delivery• Cancel anytime, for any reason.

FOR MORE OPTIONS VISIT:

NO COMMUNISM, NO SOCIALISM

JUST PURE TRADITIONAL JOURNALISM

Dear Reader,

his newspaper is for you to enjoy. In an age of media bias, we work to bring you independent news coverage.

When reporting on the Presidency, most news outlets are openly biased. We report on the President and the Administration truthfully. For China coverage, our unique network of insiders helps us tell behind- the-scenes stories that can’t be found anywhere else.

On social issues, we expose the destructive history of communism and its continued effects on today’s society. For arts and lifestyle, we focus on classical culture and traditional values.

At The Epoch Times, we believe the media has a responsibility to uphold a moral society.

Subscribe today. Get the independent news you won't find anywhere else, and get the insights only The Epoch Times can provide, delivered to your doorstep every week.

T

ReadEpoch.com

SUBSCRIBE NOW AND GET THE REAL NEWS!ReadEpoch.com 833-693-7624

229 W. 28th Street, Fl. 7, NY NY 10001

DELIVER TO:

DELIVERY NOTES

NAME PHONE ( )

Two options after first month trial, please choose:

Every week: 1 paper + 5 digital papers (Mon-Fri)

ADDRESS APT.

CITY STATE ZIP EMAIL

Name on Card Authorization Signature

Card Number: Expiration Date: CVC Nr.

PLEASE PRINT (All fields are required)

--- --- --- ---

100% satisfaction guaranteed promiseThis is a continuous membership that may be cancelled at any time. To cancel or make changes to your subscription, please call 833-693-7624. Credit cards will be enrolled in automatic payments. Your subscription will automatically renew unless you cancel. Cancel anytime, for any reason.

USE OF THIRD PARTIES, PRIVACY AND USE OF DATAWe may use third parties to assist in the provision and fulfillment of any part of the subscription service on our behalf. We may pass your personal information provided by you to such third parties but only for the purposes of providing the subscription delivery service to you. Your personal billing information will be dealt with in accordance with our privacy policy.

PAYMENT METHOD

MAIL TO:

☐ VISA ☐ MC ☐ AMEX ☐ DISC

☐ CHECK $ #

New customers only. After the first month, your subscription of choice will take affect. Cancel anytime for any reason, at 833-693-7624.

*

☐ CREDIT CARD/ ☐ DEBIT CARD:

☐ $139 ($2.66/wk)— 12 months $228

☐ $39 ($3/wk)— 3 months $57

☐ $1 — First month trial*✓